The 20 Best Action Movies on Max

Photo: Murray Close
/A24

This article is updated frequently as titles leave and enter Max. *New additions are indicated with an asterisk.

Action movies have long been the most successful genre at home, as viewers try to replicate that rush they got at the movie theater in their own living room. The Max (formerly HBO Max) selection of action flicks is predictably dense, bringing in some of the DC Universe, classic genre movies, and modern hits. Everyone from Martin Campbell to Martin Scorsese can find a home here, and you’ll often find a Batman, too. We will update this list regularly to give readers a new action movie to watch whenever they need a fix, or a reminder to watch a classic they’ve already seen.

*Anaconda

Year: 1997
Runtime: 1h 30m
Director: Luis Llosa

Sometimes you want an intellectual action movie; sometimes you want to watch a giant snake terrorize a pop star. When you’re in the mood for the latter, pop on this ridiculous B-movie with an A-cast that stars Jon Voight, Ice Cube, and Jennifer Lopez in the story of a lunatic who tricks a documentary crew onto a journey to hunt a 40-foot snake.

Attack the Block

Year: 2011
Runtime: 1h 29m
Director: Joe Cornish

Long before he won a Golden Globe for Small Axe, John Boyega broke through in this 2011 sci-fi/action flick from director Joe Cornish. With echoes of John Carpenter, it’s the tale of a street gang who end up being the final defense between the world and an alien invasion.

Batman

Year: 1989
Runtime: 2h 7m
Director: Tim Burton

The modern superhero movie owes an incredible debt to what Tim Burton did in 1989 with Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, and Kim Basinger. It wasn’t the first superhero movie, but it felt darker and different from the candy-coated men in tights movies that came before, especially the superior sequel, also on Max. Watch them both.

The Batman

Year: 2022
Runtime: 2h 56m
Director: Matt Reeves

Matt Reeves now owns the saga of the Dark Knight as a sequel to his March 2022 action blockbuster has already been announced. Dropping on Max while it was still in theaters, The Batman is an ambitious epic reboot of the legendary hero, anchored by Reeves’s craft and fascinating performances from Robert Pattinson, Zoe Kravitz, Paul Dano, and many more.

*Civil War

Year: 2024
Runtime: 1h 49m
Director: Alex Garland

A24 made a fortune on this one by advertising it as a commentary on the divisions that are currently tearing apart the country, imagining a near-future wherein actual warfare has broken out between regions. It’s not exactly that movie, but it is an interesting study in wartime journalism with unexpected filmmaking choices and great performances.

Crank

Year: 2006
Runtime: 1h 28m
Directors: Mark Neveldine, Brian Taylor

There aren’t enough action movies with the pure momentum of Crank, directed by Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, and the 2009 sequel, also on Max. Jason Statham plays a hitman who has to keep his adrenaline up to stay alive. It’s like Speed with a human heart instead of a bus. It’s a hell of a ride.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Year: 2000
Runtime: 2h 1m
Director: Ang Lee

One of the most successful foreign language films of all time, Ang Lee’s 2000 wuxia epic was so popular that it landed an Oscar nomination for Best Picture, along with nine other nominations (winning four). It’s a gorgeous epic based on the Chinese novel by Wang Dulu that stars the legendary Chow Yun-fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, and Chang Chen. It hasn’t aged a day in the over-two decades since its release.

Dune: Parts One & Two

Year: 2021, 2024
Runtime: 2h 36m, 2h 46m
Director: Denis Villeneuve

You can now watch the entire Dune saga to date on Max, the exclusive home to the highest grossing film of 2024 so far. The second half of Villeneuve’s saga fulfills the promise of the first, turning the set-up of the 2021 film into a full-blooded action tale of a new messiah. Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya lead an all-star cast in a film that understands both scope and character. It may not play quite as well at home as it did in theaters, but it still rocks.

*Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Year: 2024
Runtime: 2h 29m
Director: George Miller

One of the best films of 2024 is exclusively on Max right now. Ignore the haters, this is robust action filmmaking at its greatest, serving as a prequel to Fury Road but also a fantastic film in its own right. Anya Taylor-Joy captures Furiosa as a survivor in a desperate world, but it’s Chris Hemsworth who steals the movie, sketching a tyrant too power-mad to comprehend his own stupidity.

Godzilla

Year: 2014
Runtime: 2h 4m
Director: Gareth Edwards

The new MonsterVerse is on Max in its entirety, but let’s take a minute to lavish some praise on the one that restarted it all, Gareth Edwards’s underrated 2014 blockbuster. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche, Sally Hawkins, and Bryan Cranston star in the reboot of the classic Toho series that pits the big lizard guy against two monsters of equally unfathomable size. It’s a rocking good time.

Greenland

Year: 2020
Runtime: 1h 59m
Director: Ric Roman Waugh

An end-of-the-world movie released during the first Summer of the pandemic, this genre exercise wasn’t seen by enough people. It’s really solid, a reminder of how much Gerard Butler can carry a movie like this one, which reunites him with his Angel Has Fallen director in a film that’s quite literally about the end of humanity. The movie takes a micro approach to the most macro issue as it tracks one family trying to find a way to survive the impending impact from a planet-destroying comet.

Infernal Affairs

Year: 2002
Runtime: 1h 42m
Director: Andy Lau, Alan Mak

A lot of people probably don’t even know that Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winner The Departed was a remake of an awesome Hong Kong action film from just a few years earlier. Andy Lau and Tony Leung star in the story of a cop who goes undercover in a Triad while a criminal becomes a mole in the other direction at the same time. It was followed by two sequels, both of which recently dropped on Max too.

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Year: 2001
Runtime: 2h 58m
Director: Peter Jackson

The Oscar-winning franchise by Peter Jackson bounces around the streaming services with alarming regularity, now finding its way to Max for an indeterminate amount of time. Watch the entire saga of Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gange, and the rest of the Fellowship while you can.

Mad Max: Fury Road

Year: 2015
Runtime: 2h 1m
Director: George Miller

Have you seen the Furiosa trailer?!!? It’s insane and easily one of the most anticipated films of 2024. Go back to its predecessor, one of the best action movies ever made. This sequel rocked the world when it was released in 2015 on its way to winning multiple Oscars and really setting a new bar for practical action effects. George Miller went into the desert and returned with one of the most ambitious, insane, downright impossible action epics ever made.

Panic Room

Year: 2002
Runtime: 1h 52m
Director: David Fincher

David Fincher followed up his cult hit Fight Club with a movie that still doesn’t get enough attention in his filmography, this 2002 thriller starring Jodie Foster and a young Kristen Stewart. Not only is this a tight, well-crafted flick but it’s also, believe it or not, unavailable on Blu-ray. So streaming is the only way to watch it in HD right now.

*Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Year: 2011
Runtime: 1h 45m
Director: Rupert Wyatt

Any list of the best modern action trilogies really needs to include the rebooted Planet of the Apes series that started with this excellent blockbuster over a decade ago. James Franco plays a man who raises a genetically engineered chimpanzee named Caesar (Andy Serkis, who gives an all-timer mo-cap performance), who starts the revolution of the primates over their human captors. It’s a phenomenal movie, and both of the (also excellent) sequels are also on Max.

Robocop

Year: 1987
Runtime: 1h 43m
Director: Paul Verhoeven

People like to point at ‘80s movies and say they were ahead of their time, but this may be most true about Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 masterpiece, a film that foretold how technology would impact law enforcement in ways that took decades to come true. A brilliant action satire, this is the story of a Detroit cop who is murdered and revived as the title character, a superhuman cyborg enforcer. It’s even more riveting and relevant almost four decades later. Note: Both original era sequels and the 2010s reboot are also on Max.

Seven Samurai

Year: 1956
Runtime: 3h 26m
Director: Akira Kurosawa

They don’t get more classic than Akira Kurosawa’s classic that inspired generations of action filmmakers. Co-written, directed, and edited by one of the best filmmakers of all time, it’s the story of seven ronin who are hired by farmers to fight the bandits who are ruining their village. It’s a formative text for the action genre, and quite simply one of the best movies ever made.

The Thomas Crown Affair

Year: 1999
Runtime: 1h 54m
Director: John McTiernan

Pierce Brosnan gave his best non-Bond performance in stellar remake of the 1968 film of the same name. Stepping into the shoes of Steve McQueen is no easy feat but Brosnan does so with style as Thomas Crown, a billionaire art thief who falls for the insurance investigator chasing him, played by the wonderful Rene Russo.

Wanted

Year: 2008
Runtime: 1h 50m
Director: Timur Bekmambetov

It’s not perfect but few films have felt more like a moving comic book than this 2008 blockbuster based on the graphic novels by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones. James McAvoy stars as an ordinary guy who learns that he’s actually in the lineage of professional assassins as he gets sucked into a world that include characters played by Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Terence Stamp, and Common.

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